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William Shakespeare - poetry, poems
so, the leonardo o' lit, christopher marlowe, was born in crewe alexandra (which is on the outskirts of mercia) back in the old days before the railways, before association football, before the usa...
born 1564, died 1616
Shakespeare here by title
Shakespeare here by first line
Q&A by Michael Kelly
- Q: Who wrote the works of Shakespeare?
A: SHAKESPEARE
- Q: Oh but what about the people who think it was Bacon?
A: They're delusional. At most he might have nicked bits from Bacon's essays
or vice versa. The rest is based on absurd cryptology and conspiracy
theories Dan Brown would have rejected as implausible. E.g. they'll read a
line like 'Fetch me a bacon sandwich hither' and start frothing at the
mouth.
- Q: Wasn't it Marlowe then?
A: So who wrote Marlowe's sodding plays?
- Q: OK, maybe the Earl of Oxford was Shakespeare
A: NO. IT WAS THE BALD BUGGER FROM STRATFORD
- Q: Elizabeth the First?
A: A bird? Do me a favour
- Q: Oh but surely it was a posh bloke who'd been to university and travelled
the world? How does a provincial bumpkin like Shakespeare know so much? How
could he set so many plays in Italy, for example?
A: HE USED HIS SODDING IMAGINATION. Anyway it's not like he describes bloody
Italy, is it? If you're lucky you get, 'Scene 2, a street in Verona.' You
don't have to be Alan bastard Whicker, do you?
- Q: Ahh, but how did he know they had streets in Italy?
A: He asked his Dad, probably, that's what I do when I don't know something.
He went 'Daaad, Daaad, are there streets in Italy?' and his Dad went 'I
should imagine so, young Bill, the Eyeties have feet like everyone else, I
reckon, and where there are feets there are streets.' It's folk wisdom,
innit?
- Q: What about the nuts who think Shakespeare was Italian?
A: Grow up. If that was the case his characters would have said things like
'Mamma mia' and 'Bastardo animale.'
- Q: So why do people think other people wrote the plays?
A: TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS. A HARD DAY'S WORK IN THE REAL WORLD WOULD
KILL THEM. And anti-baldy prejudice. And, most likely, reasons of class war.
Started with toffs going, How did this lower-middle-class oik write all this
brilliant stuff? Only now it's mutated into, 'How did an oppressed ordinary
bloke get so much knowledge in the grim days before Blair, everyone knows
the Toffs had a monopoly of education and everything in the dark ages before
New Labour came along.'
And people liking to play detective.
And people nowadays preferring writer's biographies to writers' writing,
which leaves them with a problem with the man from Stratford because he's
pretty much a hole in the air.
And people not getting that writers write what they imagine rather than what
they know.
And people refusing to accept the always startling fact of genius.
& "But this swift business I must uneasy make":
Intra-Familial Killing and Feudal Reclamation in The Tempest - by Nate
Stuff in books
William Shakespeare on the web